


So Real in the Dark

by doctormchotson



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Adultery, Cheating, Dancing, Dirty Dancing, F/M, Gore, M/M, Non-explicit cheating, Stag Night, almost a threesome, arbitrary genderbending of minor character, mentions of gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-08 05:44:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1928823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctormchotson/pseuds/doctormchotson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During John's Stag Night, Sherlock is reacquainted with an old friend, John dances with a stranger, and then John dances with someone who very much is not a stranger. The consequences are simultaneously dire, and so very late in coming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Real in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Let's Write Sherlock Challenge 14:
> 
> "One thousand stag nights! Assume for a moment that the stag night in The Sign of Three went a little differently."
> 
> Beta'd by my gorgeous, wonderful, amazing BFF Ashley. Thanks for sticking with me through the title angst :)

Sherlock and John were currently seated in bar four (Five? No, four, definitely four) of John's Stag Night, nursing their very cylindrical beers.

This one is a dance club situated next door to an apartment building in which they'd once investigated the murder of a young man who'd had his nose and, inexplicably, the smallest toe on his left foot removed postmortem with a kitchen knife. Fascinating case, although, in John's opinion, much too gory for the blog, to Sherlock's secret dismay. The young man, as it happens, had made the unfortunate mistake of mocking a young psychotic woman's nose in passing, which she then took offense to, followed him home, stabbed him through the eye with a knitting needle killing him instantly, and then took his nose as a souvenir. No one, the young woman included, knows what happened to the toe. Well. John imagines Sherlock knows judging by the minute twitch of his upper lip whenever the case comes up in conversation, but if he does he's kept completely, and most unusually, mum.

As it stands, John's plan to disrupt Sherlock's plan to keep them both at an "optimum level of inebriation" has worked splendidly. Sherlock has been gently swaying to the thumping bass beat of the music since taking a seat, eyes glassy and unfocused, and John has bypassed buzzed in favor of "two seconds away from doing something gloriously stupid and not caring one bit."

Much to John's delight, Sherlock has taken to deducing their fellow club inhabitants, which, while always entertaining, has rapidly devolved into the patently ridiculous.

"I'm telling you, John," Sherlock declares, slurring a bit and thumping his glass to the table. "Should a man wish to engage that woman there," he points a wavering stupidly long finger at a buxom twenty-something leaned back against the bar, "in coitus, the optimal line to use would be, 'Can I warm my hands in your hot breasts?'" Sherlock concludes, posh over enunciation of 'breasts' setting John off into a helpless round of guffaws.

While John is attempting to control his giggles, and Sherlock is slapping him ineffectually around the shoulders for laughing at his brilliance, a woman approaches their table.

"Sherlock?" the woman says, a touch of fondness and wonder in her tone.

Both men are immediately silenced and whip their heads up (somewhat woozily) to get a look at their interloper.

She's shorter than average, several inches shorter even than John, with long brunette hair flowing past her shoulders. Thin, fit, with eyes sparkling with mirth and intelligence, John instantly takes a liking to her.

"Hullo!" John says when Sherlock fails to reply, giving her a dopey smile.

She laughs, "Hullo to you, sir," she replies, a warm smile filling her face.

By this point Sherlock has recovered from his silence. "Vic?" he says, mouth unattractively open, looking a bit dumbfounded.

A smile slowly blooms on his features, honest in a way that is usually reserved only for his (former) flatmate and John feels a stab of irrational jealousy.

"VIC!" Sherlock cries, loud enough the people at the next table over actually turn their heads in spite of the din of the music.

The woman ("Vic" apparently) laughs again. "Well, it's good to see your powers of observation are sharp as ever, I was worried you'd lost it a bit since our Uni years," she teases gently.

"Pishaw!" Sherlock declares, "I'll show you powers of obvser - osbver," a little furrow of confusion mars his regal brow as he stumbles over the word, "observation!" He grins triumphantly at Vic, who is now giggling at him unrepentantly.

The Consulting Detective clears his throat and pops the collar of his coat (which he is still wearing for reasons completely unbeknownst to John) as dramatically as possible given his clumsy fingers. "You have spent the past ten years abroad, living between two and three months in any given locale, taken fifteen lovers, two female, one transgendered man whom you especially liked, lost most of your savings in one hand of poker, worked it back doing...mmmm baking, I think, or possibly cooking meth, hard to say, but given your history pastries seems the most likely, and you've only just returned to London for the wedding of your closest cousin, whose husband you secretly loathe," he pauses for breath, hiccups a bit, sways minutely in his seat and then attempts to sit up straight in his chair. "Did I miss anything?"

John tenses for a moment, knowing full well what usually occurred when Sherlock deduced someone so thoroughly, but instead of the flying glassware he was expecting, Vic threw her head back and laughed.

"Brilliant! Absolutely stunning, my god you haven't changed a bit" she says, grinning from ear to ear.

Sherlock flushes and preens a bit at the praise, and John does his best to fight down another wave of jealousy. When she turns to him and says, "Isn't he bloody fantastic?" like it was the most glorious secret between the two of them, John finds it much easier to like her again, and simply match her grin with one of his own.

Vic, still grinning, suddenly thrusts a hand at John for him to shake. He takes it, her grip dry and pleasantly firm.   
“We both know Sherlock will never do the polite thing and introduce us, and you, quite frankly, need no introduction, but I imagine you’re wondering who the bloody hell I am. Victoria Trevor, but for the love of God please call me Vic. I’m an old uni friend of Sherlock’s -”

“Weeeeeeell,” Sherlock begins, tipping his head to the side, before being summarily interrupted.

“Oh shut up, Sherly, we were friends and you’re just going to have to choke on that. Lord knows I did a better job of it than bloody Billy the Skull,” she says, rolling her eyes and tossing John a wink.

Vic turns back to Sherlock and stretches out a hand to him. "Well, now that you've proven your mind to be sound as ever, what say you dance with me and prove the rest of you still knows what it's doing?"

Sherlock is shaking his head before she even finishes her question. "Nooooo, m'feet feel funny, wouldn't do you justice to dance now," he says, proving his point by almost falling off his chair with the force of his rejection. John shoots out a hand to steady him, and Sherlock stares at it for a moment. "B'sides, it's John's Stag Do, m'his Best Man, can't go off dancing and leave 'im!"

Vic, who had become a touch disappointed, turns and looks at John appraisingly. "Stag Do, eh?" she says with a smirk. "How about you then? Care to take a turn about the room with me, handsome?"

The involuntary once-over he can't help but give her at the request has him slamming the brakes on that idea before it can fully form in his mind. "Nooo, nope, no way, not happening, m'wife," he says, emphasis on Mary's future title, "would skin me. So - "

With a great sigh and a flailing hand, Sherlock interrupts him. "Oohhhh Mary just wants you to have fun. Dancing is fun. Vic can dance. Go. Dance. Fun." He devolves into hand flapping, and Vic takes John’s hesitation as her cue to laugh again and teasingly flourish her hand in front of him.

"Just one dance, promise," she says and she gives him a soft smile. With a sigh and a grin in return he relents and takes her hand.

It feels like the blink of an eye and they're making their way through the mass of people on the dance floor, looking for some space to claim as their own. The bass writhes through the crowd like a living thing, echoing through his bones. He grips Vic's hand a bit tighter so as not to lose her.

Finally she stops in an open space and turns to face him. She gives a little wave over his shoulder and when he turns to look he sees Sherlock, perfectly visible on the raised section of seating next to the dance floor, staring at them. John grins and gives a cheeky little salute.

When he turns back around it's to see Vic, back to him and lit in pale blues by the laser lighting, shimmying in a slow, sensual wave. It starts in her hips, which rock gently from side to side, and flows smoothly up her writhing belly, through her chest, up her arms all the way to her wrists which twist beguilingly above her head.

It's the complete wrong type of music for this sort of dance, it should be too bass heavy and fast for it, but she manages to make it look perfect, effortless, like a scene from a film.

A vicious shock of arousal slams into John's body and adrenaline washes the haze of alcohol from his mind. No longer giggling and tipsy, he feels flush with possibility, and filled to the brim with want. He knows he should stop, apologize to Vic and go back to Sherlock, but nothing in his life has ever seemed more impossible and so he stands, rooted in place.

Steadily, slowly, Vic's body movements pick up in intensity. Hips no longer gentle, they seem to yearn and beg to be touched. The roll of her back and torso becomes more pornographic, and her finger bury themselves in her hair. With a near audible moan she throws her head back and John's composure snaps.

One sliding step and he's there, hands wrapping around her rolling hips to pull her to him. She slits her eyes open and grins over her shoulder at him before rolling her entire body solidly back into his. He grunts at the sensation, blood ringing in his ears and rapidly heading inexorably southward. John tightens his grip on her hips and rolls his pelvis to meet her.

They set up a rhythm, Vic circling her hips back into his while they sway to the thrum of the bass. She slides a hand down the outside of his thigh and he retaliates with one of his own gliding across her belly. With a moan he can actually hear now, she puts her head back against his shoulder and arches her back, pushing her arse against his rapidly growing erection.

The song shifts, and with her eyes locked on his over her shoulder she smirks impishly and slowly turns to the beat of the music. Now every brush of her body hums against his skin; breasts skimming along his chest, one of her legs between his, her thigh and hip teasing along his denim clad length.

Just as he's pulling her closer to him with a hand in the small of her back, she glances over his shoulder and her eyes open wide in shock. It's all the warning he gets before the warmth of a solid body presses itself almost tentatively along his back.

"John," comes Sherlock's rumbling, frankly wrecked voice directly into his ear. Long, strong hands rest on his hips and he gasps and the electric shock of it. Vic looks at him, looks back at Sherlock, and her pupils blow wider than they already were. She grinds herself firmly against John at the same moment Sherlock begins to dance along his back and John knows he is well and truly fucked.

There are so many things wrong with his current situation he doesn't even have time to run through them all. So he doesn't think about the fact he's getting married, and he doesn't even know Vic, and Sherlock is his best friend and, oh, right, male. It's all so very fucking wrong, but it's so very fucking right and so he doesn't think. He just grinds his hips back into Sherlock and tugs Vic tightly to him and moans.

At this encouragement, Sherlock becomes bolder, fitting himself even tighter against John's back. He can feel the hardness of Sherlock's cock against his arse and even though some part of his brain thinks that should bother him, his body thinks it's the most arousing thing to ever happen in his life.

By this point he's all but forgotten about the woman plastered along his front. Hell, he's all but forgotten the other dancers, the music, the club, all of fucking London. All he knows is Sherlock, his Sherlock, his mad, ridiculous best fucking friend, is dancing with him, and setting fire to his skin with his fingertips, and emitting breathy grunts into his ear every time John moves his hips just so.

John tips his head back against Sherlock's shoulder and removes one of his hands from Vic's still-writhing body to thread it into Sherlock's hair. With almost a wail, Sherlock thrusts hard against John and bends his head forward to rest his teeth along John's exposed carotid.

Vic slowly peels herself away from John, panting with exertion, grin firmly remaining on her face. With a last trail of fingertips along John's chest she throws him a wink and disappears into the crowd.

The wash of cold air along his front snaps John into the realization that it's just the two if them now, he and Sherlock, cocks both hard, dirty dancing in a seedy club. Guilt makes it's first real appearance and he groans in a mixture of lust and supreme frustration. He pulls away from Sherlock enough to turn around, thinking face to face might make it easier to back away but God is he ever wrong.

Sherlock is a complete wreck. Face flushed, hair sticking to his skin with sweat, chest heaving, pupils utterly blown. He is the single most breathtaking thing John has ever seen.

With a pained sound and a lurch, Sherlock closes the tiny gap that has opened up between them, grabs his face with both hands and kisses him.

The kiss lacks utterly in finesse. It is an uncoordinated slamming of mouths complete with mashed noses and clacking teeth but it is beautiful, glorious, perfect. John opens his mouth without thought or consideration, the deepening of this kiss as certain as the sunrise. He presses himself tightly to Sherlock and when their clothed erections brush it's like being shot without the bullet wound. They both moan into the kiss, and he can feel the vibrations of Sherlock's chest all the way down to his toes.

John has, admittedly, had more than his fair share of kisses. He's kissed friends and lovers and strangers, people he liked, people he didn't. He's kissed people and never wanted to kiss them again, and he's kissed people and never wanted to stop. He's kissed Mary, the woman he's agreed to marry and he thought hers were the sweetest kisses of all. But no kiss in his life has ever been like this one. Because no kiss in his life has ever felt like sprouting wings and flying through the Afghan night sky, explosions all around. And no kiss in his life has ever felt quite so much like coming home.

On that thought he tears himself away from Sherlock entirely, lips to feet. Sherlock tightens his grip on the back of his shirt (when had his hands moved there?) for only the barest of moments before he releases him. Still panting for breath Sherlock stares at him, the raw, open mixture of hope and fear and abject expectation of pain on his face tearing a hole in John's chest. He never wants to see that look on Sherlock's face again, and that, if nothing else, decides for him.

"Not like this," he says. "I - I can't, Sherlock," he's pleading now, though he's not sure what for. "Not like this."

John hovers his hand over Sherlock's cheek and stares into his heartbroken eyes for as long as he dares before spinning away from him and making his way blindly out of the club.

\-------------

Sherlock stands in front of his wardrobe, staring at the suit hanging from it. His Best Man suit. The one he's supposed to wear while watching John marry someone else. The one he's supposed to wear while giving a speech and pretending he doesn't know precisely how his best friend tastes.

With a shake of his head he flings the thought away from him. He's too weak to delete it, though he knows how much easier it would make all this. But he hoards the knowledge instead, along with everything else he learned about John from the moment he first met him.

"Right then," he says to himself. "Into battle." 

He reaches for the suit only to be unceremoniously interrupted by the outer door to 221 being flung open. Footsteps up the stairs follow, the tread intimately familiar, and completely throwing him for a loop.

With a few crisp strides, Sherlock moves out into the living room just as John bursts through the door.

The two men simply stare at each other for a moment. When John continues to stare and doesn't show any signs of explaining his presence, or why he's in jeans and a jumper when he should be wrestling with his own suit, Sherlock intervenes.

"Uhm. Hi?" he queries.

Snapped out of his reverie, John spits a ball of sound to splat between them.

"TheweddingsoffImleavingMary"

Blinking slowly, Sherlock attempts to process. When he rather uncharacteristically fails, he frowns and says, "Uhm. Come again?"

John takes in a shuddering breath, pulls himself up to parade rest, clenches his fists and his jaw, nods sharply once, and looks directly into Sherlock's eyes for the first time since That Night.

"The wedding is off, Sherlock. I'm leaving Mary."

Beginning to wonder if he'd accidentally dosed himself with something, Sherlock blinks, frowns harder, and narrows his eyes.

Before he can open his mouth to respond, John continues.

"That night, I. We." John sighs and cuffs a hand through his hair. "Look, I've no idea what you feel for me. If, well, if you feel anything at all, really," his eyes drop to the floor between them, no longer able to maintain eye contact. "But. Well. That night, I. I realized that." John huffs a breath through his nostrils like a bull and nervously rolls his fingers out of a fist and back into it. Finally, he looks back at Sherlock.

"I love you. I think I've always loved you and so I never really knew that's what it was. I thought that's just what one feels for a friend like you, a one in a trillion person. But. Then you gave me the kiss of my life and I knew there was no going back from that. I couldn't get married, couldn't stay with Mary knowing how I felt about you."

Sherlock knows, distantly, that he probably looks quite ridiculous and shell shocked but that's because he is shell shocked and so it's a forgivable state. He's forgotten completely to breathe, and as such is equally unable to reply.

John fidgets, eyes roaming higher up the wall the longer Sherlock remains silent until his head is tipped back to look at the ceiling and he's making that duck face with his lips.

"Look, Sherlock, it's, it's alright if you. If you don't feel - like, like that. For me. I. I don't want to, to pressure you, or, make you, I dunno, uncomfortable. I just. God, Sherlock I just love you and -"

In two long, surprisingly smooth strides Sherlock is there to press his mouth to John's and steal the words from his lips. John whimpers in relief and clutches two greedy handfuls of Sherlock's dressing gown. When John's tongue touches gently to his, Sherlock pulls back slowly, stroking John's face.

"John," he says in a ragged whisper. He tries to keep out of his voice all the pain and fear, the misery of believing he'd have to watch the best thing to ever happen to him leave him for good, but he can't. Sherlock clutches John tightly to him and buries his face in his neck, breathing him in as deeply as he can. John immediately wraps his arms around him and pulls him close, gently running his hands along his back.

"I love you," he whispers in Sherlock's ear, and Sherlock peppers slow, gentle kisses to his throat, his chin, his nose, his eyelids.

"I love you," he whispers against Sherlock's lips, and since it was a day for vows, Sherlock swore, with every caress of his tongue, to someday, somehow, be worthy of the words.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, kudos, critiques, etc. all loved and snuggled and sung lullabies to. 
> 
> I can also be found [here at my Tumblr](http://doctormchotson.tumblr.com). Stop by and say hello if you like, I'm always happy to talk about headcanons, favorite fics, or anything else, really.


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